- #1
diagopod
- 98
- 3
I was trying to understand the similarities and differences between electrostatics and standard Newtonian mechanics, in particular gravitational formulas. One thing I was curious about is escape velocity. For gravity I've learned that it's sqrt(2GM/R). But for electrostatics, suppose I was trying to determine the equivalent formula. For example, suppose one wanted to know the velocity a negatively charged rocket on the surface of a positively charged sphere would have to attain in order to escape the electrostatic force of that sphere. How would one go about that? At first I'd think it would be sqrt(2KeQ/ R), but that doesn't have units of velocity, so was wondering what the right formula would be? Thanks for any guidance.